A screening programme for prostate cancer could be created in the next three to five years, an expert at the Institute of Cancer Research in London has said. Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in men, with one in eight white men diagnosed in their lifetime. It affects black men disproportionately, with one in four diagnosed. There are about 50,000 new cases of prostate cancer in the UK each year and about 11,000 men will die as a result. Despite this there is no totally effective screening programme because a blood test showing levels of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is only a guide. It does not accurately distinguish between dangerous cancers and harmless ones. Prof Ros Eeles, of the Institute of Cancer Research, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that if a PSA test was carried out now on every man in the UK over the age of 55 it would lead to over-treatment. “We will end up treating at least 12 men for every one man that you should really find disease which is going to impact on that man’s life. In the breast screening programme, it’s three to one,” she said. But Eeles said she was optimistic that would change. “With the advances in genetics and also imaging, particularly MRI, realistically we do need some more data but we’re probably looking at getting close to a tailored screening programme in the next three to five years,” she said. “We might need to use all of them together … so we can find those who have significant disease.” Prostate cancer featured heavily on the programme at the behest of the guest editor Michael Dobbs, the writer and Conservative peer who was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer this year. It killed his father and one of his brothers. The programme heard that many men do not get tested and do not seek help despite the outcomes of being treated being good. The presenter Bill Turnbull told Dobbs that he had ignored possible symptoms for months before finally going to see his GP. “Maybe if I’d seen my GP earlier, I wouldn’t be in quite the mess I am in now. But men do that. ‘I’ll be all right, there’s nothing wrong with me’, and it’s embarrassing.” Turnbull has prostate cancer that is treatable but not curable. He said, laughing, that his hope in life “was to stay alive as long as possible”. Prof Peter Johnson, the national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, told the programme that, because of the pandemic, there were several thousand fewer men starting treatment than in a normal year. “It isn’t that there’s a big backlog in the system of people waiting to be diagnosed, it’s literally we haven’t even met them yet and that’s what we’re anxious to reverse.” He urged men to use the risk checker on the Prostate Cancer UK website.